


New Beginnings

by MilkshakeKate



Series: Soundscapes [4]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: F/M, Mission Fic, New Year's Eve, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-12 22:04:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9092509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilkshakeKate/pseuds/MilkshakeKate
Summary: 1964 is the year of U.N.C.L.E., and progress, and Gaby Teller, and Illya wonders if she can feel that too — wonders if the whole world truly does revolve around her, or if it is only his.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the [Fireworks Soundscape](https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/fireworksNoiseGenerator.php)! Please adjust to your preferred settings, loves! xxx

   
Brussels, 1963   

 

The rooftop’s stone balustrades are rain-wet, lit orange by the city square below. The _Place Royale_. It’s a pit of firelight, alive with the hum of activity, of tipsy guests in silk and mink, tuxedos and patent leather shoes. Their breaths rise in a white mist with every _ooh_ and _ahh_.   

This firework display is a symbol of wealth; of outdoing last year’s host and being the talk of high society for weeks to come. The midnight toll has long since passed, but the show goes on. At this rate, the New Year celebrations are likely to ring out into the next. No doubt the host can afford it, with tonight’s dubiously acquired exhibition piece valued at a price rivalling U.N.C.L.E.’s annual budget... Solo’s fingers must be itching.   

Another deafening bang shakes through Illya’s bones. He blinks hard and looks at his watch, a force of habit, to ground himself.  

Tonight, Illya is split in two.

He is back among the parades of Red Square, clinging to his mother’s skirt. His father is returning from another diplomatic visit, unsmiling in the back of the long, black car. Illya is seven, and with another screaming rocket he is bitten by the bursting grit landing on his cheek; falling, as all things do, after shooting at a bid for freedom. The sudden fizz and melt of it on his skin, a reminder that brilliant light and showmanship can still scatter gristle and burn if one becomes too proud.   

He feels it now, the tingling that hadn’t even left a scar. Even twenty-five years later, the gold and poppy fireworks still split as harshly in his ears. Illya has since chosen to spend New Year’s Eve alone.   

Until he spends New Year’s Eve, 1963, on the rooftop of a Belgian art gallery with Gaby Teller.   

She spills over the remainder of Illya's mind like champagne.

Gaby’s tactical uniform has finally lost its crinkles, settling on her as naturally as her coveralls. She is under his scrutiny tonight, just as she has been under Solo’s for six consecutive weeks. For all her capabilities, she is still in field training. The notion of Napoleon Solo missing a New Year’s Eve party had almost ruined him; Gaby has only escaped his tutelage because he’d weaseled his way into a more social role which — only incidentally — involves far more canapes, heiresses, and proximity to the artwork than a long night crouching on a rainy rooftop. Illya had stepped in to volunteer his supervision if Gaby would accept, but that hadn’t been necessary. Mr. Waverly had already assigned him. Gaby had no choice.   

And it shows. 

As always she is steps ahead, readying the camera squarely over the domed skylight. She swats his hands away from his camera bag to fish out the polarising lens for herself. Whether Solo’s tuition is exemplary — _doubtful_ , Illya sniffs — or if Gaby is simply keen to pass her training early and work alone, he can’t tell. Certainly her progress has leapt. She is built for stealth, and still has the light footwork and held strength of a first soloist. He has lost sight of her twice tonight, only to find her masterfully obscured in shadow and half way through the task he’d been preparing to set for her.   

Now she takes up his whole field of view, lit up by sunbursts of brilliant blues, streaking scars of white. She ignores every whistle, every crackle and hiss, concentrating instead on calibrating his camera. Illya feels an odd surge of something light and high in his chest for her focus and dedication, though why should he be pleasantly surprised? Professionalism — on the clock — is as much a part of Gaby as her music, her car, her ever-changing cocktail of choice. He should not feel pride like this.  

“I expect you will take some photographs yourself?” she says, feeling his eyes on her.   

“Procedure,” he says. “You are in training.”  

Her hum is flat, and the shutter clicks fast and hollow.   

Through the glass dome they have an unhindered view of the marks. The two men stand close, studying together the prized work of the exhibit. It's an original canvas, which U.N.C.L.E. are due to return to England after its recent theft and replacement with a forgery. Illya believes it’s too abstract for Solo’s taste; it’s safe, for now.

The price tags of the lesser known accompanying pieces, however, might tempt the thief once the dust has settled.   

The marks are taking advantage of the fireworks having poured all the guests into the square. In the privacy of the empty gallery they make their deal. If their intel proves accurate, the marks are planning to rig the auction to earn a higher price, and use the profits to spread their initiative globally, having already threatened the cultural heritage of half of western Europe. 

Trivial matters. The mission is a favour to the British. He and Solo hadn’t been particularly respectful to the architecture during their last shootout in the Tate.  

“There,” Gaby says, pressing the camera into his waiting hand. “Tell me that’s not the Russian way.”  

Illya expects no less than to find the aperture and exposure settings perfectly balanced. Tonight he will shadow her in the vinegary bathroom of the safe house, red-bulb hanging low overhead, monitoring her too-generous glugs of acetic acid and insisting that she have patience.

She is always pressing ahead, always pushing buttons.

When the countdown had ended, and a Bon Année! chorused into the cold sky, Gaby hadn’t stopped working. He had glanced at her profile to find it unmoved, unflinching. A touch bitter, if anything.  

Illya supposes that New Year’s eve is meaningless to a woman like Gaby, who makes new beginnings whenever she feels like it.  

He believed he would feel just the same, just as he does about his birthday, and every New Year’s eve since he was a young boy; indifferent in the knowledge that, for him, a passing year is no brink of opportunity or renewal, but stasis, and another year on the ultimatum of his utility. Another twenty New Years and he will retire. Or be retired.  

But the weight of 1964 is heavier than any year before it. He feels it sinking under its own weight, with unanswered questions and impossibilities that could even become conceivable. Attainable. It has been a year of vast change, and it is Gaby who is both the catalyst and the stabiliser. The constant and the variable. 1964 is the year of U.N.C.L.E., and progress, and Gaby Teller, and Illya wonders if she can feel that too — wonders if the whole world truly does revolve around her, or if it is only his.  

She is looking at him only because he is looking at her. For how long? He drops his eyes to his tranquilliser gun. He tries to shake the sight of a gleam on her cheekbones in this theatre light. How it puts a little shine on the squared tip of her chilled-pink nose, casts shadows under her lashes.   

She is still staring, almost glowering. Her breath comes out in a cloud of frosty white, and there is nothing more baffling than being scrutinised by those eyes.  

So Illya takes in the square instead, where oblivious civilian couples lean on one another. Coiffed heads rest on tailored shoulders, and all the breaths of every guest rise in a plume, out of sync and swirling over the dense warmth of so many bodies, furs, flickering cigarettes. He takes it in with a distance as something he has never been a part of.   

Solo is a part of it. Superficially. He and several junior agents are down there too, waiting on Illya’s signal to flood into the evacuated gallery. Gaby shifts from one crouching knee to the other, and Illya knows that they’re already minutes behind schedule. Illya takes his own photographs, detaches the lens, and tucks the camera away into its bag.  

He nods for her to go on.  

Gaby clicks the small pane free of its lead in one try. At his bemused expression: “Solo,” she whispers, adding a tight smile. She leans the glass up against his shin. A very flimsy shackle, it is designed to keep him still so she can work without him butting in. He obeys it. 

She cocks the tranquilliser gun, only waits for Illya's confirmation to appease his role as instructor. She knows when to fire, how essential the accuracy. For safety, under her eye roll, Illya aims too, ready to take a second shot if her own strays.  

He shares her intake of breath, steadies.  

_One-two._

Both her darts land, one in the neck, another in the shoulder.   

The marks stagger, reach for their concealed weapons with gammy arms, their legs folding down like marionettes cut from their strings.  

Gaby grimaces. If the fireworks were quieter, the marks might be heard accusing one another, cursing, calling off the deal. All futile. They contort on the floor, soon seizing up like old hinges, and peer in unison to the domed glass roof and the two looming faces there, until paralysis takes hold.  

When she looks to him, Illya nods his encouragement.

"Move in," he confirms, pinching the radio transmitter pinned to his chest.

Gaby picks up the glass slanted against his knee, bent to a crouch still and soaked through for this fine rain, and clicks it back where it belongs. Below, U.N.C.L.E. agents infiltrate the gallery to bundle up the marks. They’ll be delivered to a windowless van in the delivery bay out back. Solo no doubt is close behind.  

“Shoulder,” she grumbles, unloading and reassembling the gun far more vigorously.  

“At this range, perfectly acceptable.”  

Gaby hums again, unconvinced. Classically trained, and a perfectionist by principal, she is her own worst critic.   

Illya takes note of the time, begins packing away their gear by rote. “We meet on _Rue de Pépin_ , eight minutes,” he relays, though she surely knows. It’s her blank expression, having lost her focus, which suggests otherwise. “Ready to go?”  

Gaby sits back on her heels.  

He reads what he can of her, retrieving the grappling gun from the duffel bag. “You have done well. All the time, you are improving.” Nothing. “Next year I will teach you KGB method, if you do not surpass me before.”  

"Next year," she echoes. And like that, she is taking him in with the very same sensation he’d felt on looking at her earlier — that this year is heavy, full, and with the familiar brashness of the fireworks in a foreign sky, and with a world of secrecy under their feet, nothing seems real just yet. Next year, he realises, sounds like a promise. Her eyes dart over him like she isn’t certain they’re both awake.

He watches this take hold of her in a wave he knows all too well, bewildering and lonely, so he squeezes her shoulder.  

Gaby covers his gloved hand, and then his cuff, pulling him back down to one knee, and she pushes her lips to the corner of his mouth.   

Heat rolls under Illya’s rain-cold skin. But she has finished with him already. He hadn’t closed his eyes. Neither had she. He might have considered it friendly, if she wasn't looking at him like this; she’s watching to see what change will come over him. What he'll do, what happens next.  

“Tradition,” she says archly, when he says nothing, and with the low, rare break in her voice he covets. Illya doesn’t disregard the swallow rising through her throat after it. “Happy New Year. Let’s go.”  

The heaviest fireworks yet shudder through Illya’s ribs, his ears, catching up with his pulse.

It’s adrenaline, surely, that has spurred her. Shock, the temperature. It doesn’t matter. She has made everything else feel so small. His thighs ache for his crouch and he can’t feel his exposed fingertips in this cold, but the corner of his mouth hums alive for warmth and pressure and friction, like she has struck a match on him.   

If Gaby can forge her own beginnings, so can he. This thought comes shakily but true. And, he thinks, if she fears the weight of the year ahead, he would like to hold it up for her. She is proud, and she would never ask him to — for as long as Gaby tolerates him in her life, she won't have to. It will be a relief to commit to a cause he believes in again.

With a sort of bravery that comes with no grasp of time or sense, Illya lets the grappling gun slide off his lap. Before he can think of a reason not to he takes Gaby’s face in both icy hands and he kisses her, very lightly, because he's frightened to death of her, still, even when she makes a small, shocked noise and doesn't immediately dash his head open. 

She is a very whole warmth. He must have chilblains in all his digits. They are both so freezing and damp with wet mist that the heat behind her lips is a furnace, and her cheeks are so soft that he can barely feel them. Illya weakens, exhaustion sinking into his bones. This is all it took. The pressure is there, pressing like fusing wires, pulsing where he has been cold for so long.  

Gaby does nothing. In fact, when he parts from her, she is only staring at him with an unreadable, unpredictable intensity that has Illya wondering whether he should protect his eyes or his groin.

He floods with regret. It's done. It rises from the anxious pitch of his stomach and up his throat, to peak in his head and thrum there like a punch. He can feel her on his lips, something pretty and wrongfully, thoughtlessly stolen. 

“I’m sorry," he manages. "Gaby, I—"

Her hands wrap around his wrists and her lips press over his, soon peppering him with kisses so small she could take them back if she wanted to. She is testing him more than anything, testing that he’s still there. Is she in a hurry? He supposes that they are. That they always are.     

It takes everything not to part her lips with his. To seek out the warmth, the soft, the sweet taste of her he has only ever had brief brushes with before. Now he allows himself to think of them, because he has been given her permission. Now he can think — almost guiltlessly — of when she’d thrown him to the ground in Rome, sighed so closely, hovering over him, and he had felt it all for hour after sleepless hour, night after night. And in Istanbul, when she had leaned in close to inspect his stitches, and he could smell rosewater on her chest; the powdered sugar of Turkish delight and hot, black coffee from its simmering copper pot.

Here he smells wet cement and smoke, acrid charcoal and gunpowder. But it's better than any time before. It's _more_. Because he can feel the banked warmth rising from the high neckline of Gaby's tactical wear. Dark, and thermal, keeping her heat close. It radiates along the underside of his chin and the gentle press of her lips is plush, close, shivering. With a tentative brush of her fingers on his neck Illya sighs, hoping he hadn’t imagined the little sound she’d made on touching him there for the first time. 

The very last firework breaks, crackling into the drawn-out, hissing quiet of the end. The anticipatory patience of the crowd, waiting for a final rocket shooting through the dark. A surprise to seal the display, an encore to burn into the back of the eyelids for the rest of the night. 

She leaves him far too soon.  

She’s looking at the sky, and over the square, and anywhere else. She has a defiant tilt to her chin while he presses his lips together tightly, unsure what to do with his hands now they have left her. How will he stand upright again after kneeling so far down to meet her? He would really rather not.

Gaby pulls through. She gentles him wordlessly to stand up, picking up the forgotten grappling gun at his feet.    

And with her hand on the point of his elbow, they lean together over the skylight. The marks have been removed. As has some lesser artwork, with one canvas stripped bare and only its frame left behind. If they had been watching, perhaps they would have caught Solo’s coattails flapping around the corner as he’d vanished, gallery doors swinging like a saloon’s behind him.  

The guests are due to return to the warm gold of the gallery in mere moments, as if the operation had never happened at all.  

That thought covers Illya like the dark.   

The pound of the fired grappling gun and the stagger of Gaby at his side wake him. She's facing the nearby hotel, hitting its rear balcony railings with fluke-like accuracy. At that exact moment, the crowd finally accepts that the show has come to an end, and their spattered applause rings out into the sky.  

Gaby smirks for the timing, gives the _Place Royale_ and her audience a gracious bow.  

The rooftop is close to black but she glitters in the light of the square, all pleasing lines and dark features speckled with the rain. She quirks a brow at him, clicks her belt’s carabiner closed.

“Well, come on," she says, exasperated. For all her playfulness, she is quietly nervous for his silence. "What are you waiting for?”  

Illya crosses the few steps it takes to reach her. There, she watches him like a hawk, his hands especially, as he hooks his grip into the thick zip-wire belt around her hips.

And he lifts her by it, just inches from the ground. To check the belt's integrity, and hers. Her integrity is a easily cracked thing, like this; he has baffled her, and now she won't look at the sky or at the square, but only at him, eyes darting between his to anticipate what he'll do.

It is always a treat to surprise Gaby Teller.

Satisfied, Illya adjusts it to her true size. He checks, and checks again, and Gaby lets him stand in her space. So as not to flatter him with her blush, she gives him the eye roll she saves for dressing rooms, where he indulgently turns her on the spot and admires her, form and function. It is a familiar dance. The only one he has ever enjoyed.  

“You.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I posted a G rated fanfic... may I be cleansed of my previous debauchery??? my wanton ways?? am I wholesome again??? forgive me, grandmother. I offer you this grass-fed, family friendly, organic garbage.
> 
> Quote: _"G! hahaha the holidays have turned you saintly"_ \- [blueincandescence](http://archiveofourown.org/users/blueincandescence), who knows me.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! Happy New Year to you all, my loves!


End file.
